Proposals for Former Sand Mine

An area of about 71 acres zoned for commercial-industrial use in Wainscott, which runs from north of the Montauk Highway all the way to the Long Island Rail Road tracks, is before the East Hampton Town Planning Board as the Tintle family, which owns it, seek preliminary site-plan approvals for three lots in connection with a settlement reached in August in Town Justice Court. The family had been cited for multiple violations of the town code.

The property, bordered by Wainscott Northwest Road to the west and Hedges Lane to the east, is the site of a defunct sand mine and an existing cement factory. According to JoAnne Pahwul, assistant director of the Planning Department, the mining operation was abandoned at least a generation ago. At a planning board meeting on Nov. 5, she reviewed the property’s zoning, which predates the code, and several applications for other uses that had been proposed but denied over the years.

The Tintle ownership group is operated by John Tintle, whose father, the late William Tintle, founded the business and ran it, along with other sand mines, for many years. He had once proposed dividing the property into 16 lots. Then, in 1997, he presented the board with a plan to use part of the property for a drive-in movie theater with parking for 1,400 cars. Both proposals were turned down.

Eventually, however, the board approved subdividing the property into six lots, which are said to have a crazy-quilt pattern, each with a different size and shape. At issue now are three of those lots, which are owned by distinct family corporations, with Wainscott Hamlet Center on the largest parcel of the three, at almost 40 acres, and Wainscott Industrial Center and Wainscott Commercial Center on the other two.

 There is a two-story, over 1,500-square-foot office building with a deck on one of the parcels, apparently built without a permit, an approximately 3,000-square-foot storage shed that has been converted into a repair garage, and a landscaping business that needed, but doesn’t have, a separate permit.

The family is represented by Brian E. Matthews of Eagan and Matthews of East Hampton, who said the family wants to clear up the violations and expand parking as well as get site plan approvals.

Ms. Pahwul complained about the lack of details on the application. It appeared, when she visited the site, that there were multiple businesses operating on single lots, with some seeming to sprawl across lot lines. For example, on the largest parcel, she said, besides a cement factory there also were a repair garage and a maritime construction company. Only two business uses are allowed on a single lot under the code, unless the property has a multiple industrial complex permit, which Ms. Pahwul suggested the applicant and the board consider.

Bob Schaeffer, a longtime Wainscott resident and member of the board, agreed with Ms. Pahwul, and urged the board to follow her suggestion. He asked Mr. Matthews if the owners would agree to obtain such a permit.

Mr. Matthews told the board he did not believe the applicant would go along with combining the applications into one site plan, and questioned Ms. Pahwul’s assertion that there were multiple uses on single lots. “These are separate properties,” he said. “When you look at the aerial, they look like one property, but they’re not.”

Mr. Schaeffer turned the conversation to three structures that sit on the border of two of the lots. “You have not addressed lot line modification,” he said, “and a use that hasn’t even been addressed in here is the marine construction company.”

Mr. Matthews told the board that he had not been aware of the presence of that company until he read Ms. Pahwul’s analysis. She reported that the maritime construction business had replaced a portable toilet business at that location. “It’s a revolving door,” she said.

Ian Calder-Piedmonte, a board member, agreed with Mr. Matthews that the owners had a right to have the properties reviewed one by one, but added, “If we are going to talk, we should talk about how they all relate to each other.” Job Potter, another member, also agreed, saying, “The owner needs to use these properties as if they were separate lots.”

“You have some homework to do,” Reed Jones, the chairman of the board, said to Mr. Matthews, who agreed to meet with the Planning Department before returning to the board with a revised plan.

Besides the Wainscott site, the Tintle family owns two other sand mines in Suffolk County, one in East Quogue, and one in Noyac. Both apparently have had their share of controversy.

 The 50-acre Noyac mine, called Sand Land and on Middle Line Highway, is also approaching the end of its life as a mine. John Tintle applied to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation in August for a permit to allow the mine to expand by five acres and to be allowed to dig 45 feet deeper.

Earlier this year, David Eagan, of Eagan and Matthews, won a judgment in State Supreme Court reversing a 2012 decision by the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals. The board had ruled that mulching being done at Sand Land, which is now in a residential district having been rezoned from industrial use in 1972, was an expansion of use. State Supreme Court Justice Gerard J. Asher found otherwise, ruling that mulching had been going on since before the code was changed, making it an allowed use.

The Tintle-owned East Quogue mine, operating as East Coast Mines, which also does mulching as well as sand mining, was the scene of a fatal accident in February. Declan J. Boland of Riverhead, who had worked for the company for 12 years, was killed when an 80-foot-tall slope of reclaimed loam and mulch collapsed as he was climbing it, burying him alive. The federal Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration found, after an investigation, that “the accident occurred due to the management’s failure to establish methods to maintain the slope stability at the reclamation dump site.”

Information regarding consequences of the ruling, if any, was not readily available.